Interactive television (ITV) combines conventional television with additional interactive content to present a viewer with an enhanced version of a television program or commercial. Typically, the interactive content is in some way related to the television program being viewed, such as biographical information about one of the actors in the program, additional information about a topic covered in the program, and the like. If the television program is a game show, the interactive content often allows the viewer to play along with the game. For example, a viewer may answer the same questions as the contestants on the game show.
In order to allow a viewer to experience an enhanced television program, a broadcaster encodes a television program with ITV data and broadcasts the encoded television program to the viewers. The ITV data may take many forms, such as, for example, HTML, XML, JAVA, or JAVA Script commands. If the receiving viewer's television system is equipped with an ITV receiver, the ITV receiver may decode the embedded ITV data for accessing the associated interactive content or performing an action indicated by the command.
A problem that often arises in providing an ITV program is that there may be different, dissimilar types of ITV receivers receiving the ITV program. For example, one ITV receiver may be configured with an HTML based platform while another receiver may be configured with a JAVA based platform. Similarly, there may be more than one organization responsible for developing the interactive content. Each organization may develop the interactive content using a different ITV platform. Consequently, the unique ITV data generated by one organization using one type of platform may be different, and unusable, by a receiver configured to receive and decode ITV data generated by a different organization using a different type of platform.
One approach in solving the above problem is to generate and transmit, for a particular television program, a separate ITV stream for each type of ITV platform. Each ITV stream would therefore be tailored to a particular receiver's needs. Transmitting multiple content streams, however, is laborious and results in an inefficient use of bandwidth.
Accordingly, what is desired is a system and method for transmitting ITV content created and received by different ITV platforms without having to generate and deliver content streams catered to each individual platform.